Click HERE to Save Solipsist's Soul

OK, the Solipsist is probably going to Hell for this one.  Read on at your own moral risk.

So, you know those "Save the Children"-type commercials?  (YNSHC can hear his faithful readers' collective intake of breath: "Oh, God.  Where's he going with this?")  The ones where adorable fly-covered, distended-bellied tykes are pimped by Sally Struthers or Maureen McCormick or some other pudgy starlet relic from the '70s?  (You were warned!)

(Digression: Yes, yes, Maureen McCormick went on "Celebrity Fat Club" [sic] and lost the weight, but if the Solipsist is going to go to Hell anyway, y'know, why be kind now?  "In for a penny, in for a pound," and all that.  End of digression.)

You know how these things work: You send a small monthly payment--less than the cost of a cup of coffee!  (Not that that's saying much in the age of $5.00 lattes.)--and in return you get a photo of "your" starving Ghanaian along with monthly updates on the kid's progress.  Well, OK: Overall a worthy cause, and YNSHC would not wish to discourage anyone from doing whatever s/he feels is right in this cold, cold world.

Anyhoo, last night, YNSHC was watching TV when one of those ads came on.  Or, at least, that's what he THOUGHT came on.  Onscreen, an earnest pitchman stood in an obviously foreign land, surrounded by rundown hovels.  OK.  So far, no surprises.  But then the Solipsist noticed that the pitchman was wearing a yarmulke.  Well, why not?  We Jews are charitable sorts.  Stands to reason that some Jewish organization would take notice of the plight of starving children and take steps to solve it.

Imagine the cognitive dissonance, then, when the expected starving child was replaced with the image of Great-Aunt Rivke!  This organization, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (Christians AND Jews?!?  Come on!  Pick a side!)  (Boy, it's getting hot in here!)--as Solipsist was saying, the IFCJ is soliciting donations to "sponsor" elderly Jews in the former Soviet Union.  Specifically, the Rebbe asked for a $25 donation to provide a "Passover Kit"--a jug of wine, a pallet of matzoh, and thou--so these folks could have a proper Seder.

Now, God bless these people.  Many of them are Holocaust survivors; they have been through things that the rest of us should pray we never have to imagine.  And it is terrible that they are living in penury, unable to afford the basics of a  Passover meal--or any meal, frankly.  There is certainly nothing wrong with an organization collecting funds to help these people.  (In a small act of atonement, YNSHC has attached a link to IFCJ's website [www.ifcj.org] to this post should anybody wish to contribute.  If you click the title of today's post, you will be taken to IFCJ's website.)

There is, however, something jarring about elderly Jews being marketed in the same way as starving children.  If we contribute, do we get a picture of our Babushka, along with monthly letters on her progress?  On the upside, this is likely to be a much SHORTER commitment than sponsoring a toddler.

(Sorry, sorry, YNSHC is soooooo sorry.)

The point, if we may try to redeem ourselves with a bit of possibly helpful commentary for the folks at IFCJ, is that they are taking the wrong approach.  You can rightly chastise Solipsist for making tasteless jokes about an undeniably serious and somber subject.  But let's face it: If HE's having these thoughts, somebody else is, too--probably several somebodies.  And we're not talking about anti-Semites, here.  Hell, the Solipsist IS Jewish--he's your target audience!  If you can't get HIM to take the plight of these folks seriously, what hope do you have of reaching the masses?

Seriously, IFCJ: Take a different approach.  Elderly Jews may be cute and cuddly (sorry), but you shouldn't try to market them in the same was as you would hungry babies.  If your earnest appeals smack of satire, you're probably not doing as much good as you would hope.

Slippery Slope Watch II

To be clear: The Solipsist is not a tycoon.  He is not a master of the universe (well, except maybe his little corner of it).  He has no sympathy for the financial savants who got the country--the world--into its current economic mess.

Nevertheless, there is something troubling about the confiscatory tax rates Congress has approved in order to claw back some portion of the bonuses paid to executives at AIG and other going concerns (drunkenly staggering concerns?) that have received federal bailouts.  The news was that a tax rate of 90% would be imposed on executive bonuses paid out at any firms holding more than $5 billion of taxpayer money.

Inherently, there is nothing wrong with this tax rate.  Heck, even a 99% tax rate could be justified on the grounds that receiving 1% of SOMETHING is still better than receiving 100% of NOTHING, which is what these folks would have gotten if they HADN'T received federal money.  What bothers the Solipsist, though, is the retroactive nature of the taxation.  Look, YNSHC is as outraged as anyone at the thought that these folks are being rewarded for, not to put too fine a point on it, failure (see post of 3/15/09).  And if these people had any consciences whatsoever, they would voluntarily forego these bonuses, as many of them have already agreed to do.

They are not, however, LEGALLY obligated to do so.  The federal government had the opportunity to forbid the payment of any "retention bonuses" as a condition of receiving bailout money.  They did not do this.  As loathsome as the behavior of AIG and its ilk is, this is one thing that we cannot blame on them.  The payments were simply the fulfillment of a contract, and the last time YNSHC checked, one of the major functions of government--ANY government--is to ensure that legal contracts are fulfilled, whether the contracts themselves are desirable or not.

The problem is what happens from here on out.  Even if we all agree that these particular executives deserve to be soaked for as much as possible, what happens once this precedent is set?  Let's say Bill owes his friend Fred money.  Bill borrows money from his parents to pay Fred.  But Bill's parents think that Fred doesn't really deserve THEIR money (even though they've essentially given up claim to it by lending it to Bill to do with as he saw fit).  So Bill's parents come to Fred and ask him to give them back most of the money.  Should Fred have to give the money back to Bill's parents?  YNSHC doesn't think so.  Bill has to pay his parents back as soon as possible, but it's not really Fred's problem (although a real friend would probably try to help Bill out).  Legally speaking, though, couldn't the government now invoke the AIG rule to gouge Fred?

Again, to reiterate, there is no sympathy here for these executives.  And going forward, the government should make clear that any such bonuses WILL be taxed at a 90% level.  Or a 99% level.  Or a 99.999% level.  Whatever.  But you can't change the rules of the game midstream.

That just seems un-American.

Pet Peeves (A Brief Post)

Repeat after Solipsist:

Say, "New."

"New."

Say, "Clear."

"Clear."

Say, "New clear."

"New clear."

Now, say it faster.

"Newclear."

Was that really so hard, Mr. Ex-President?

Trial and Error 404

How do you stop jurors from inappropriately discussing a case when all they need to do to communicate with the outside world is send a tweet from a Blackberry?  How do you keep jurors from conducting their own research into a case when they have the World Wide Web at their fingertips, 24/7?

Judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys are confronting these questions.  Some cases have ended in mistrials because of jurors using the internet to gather extra information on plaintiffs or defendants or even lawyers and judges--information that for one reason or another had been deemed inadmissible or prejudicial.

One of the bedrock premises of our judicial system is that prosecution and defense present their evidence, and the jury is allowed to consider only that evidence when deliberating.  For better or worse, though, it is becoming more and more difficult to enforce this prohibition in the internet age.

For better?  Maybe.  Sure, we can all imagine "for worse": A juror basing a decision on an unvetted Wikipedia entry claiming the defendant's hobbies include panda vivisection; a serial killer acquitted because his Mom zaps off Jpegs of our modern-day Bundy as an adorable toddler chewing the ears off his stuffed rabbit.  These outcomes would be undesirable and should be scrupulously guarded against.

But the fact is the technology is here.  It's not going away.  Couldn't the easy availability of excesses of information be useful to the judicial system?  Indeed, many of the jurors who have engaged in this illicit websurfing are actually trying to do their jobs better.  They want as much information as possible before making what may be life and death decisions, and they believe--rightly--that the courtroom adversaries are not giving them as much information as they could possibly get.

Isn't it at least worth considering a different approach: Encourage jurors to conduct research.  Not in some private, surreptitious, and/or scattershot way, but as a group, with attorneys present.  Jurors could actually ask attorneys and judges questions.  If information is deemed unverifiable (as in a prejudicial Wiki entry), the judge could disallow it and explain why.  On the other hand, if valuable information comes up, then the burden falls on the attorneys to explain why it should or should not be entered into evidence.

Is an old-fashioned judicial model that implicitly values the ignorance of its deliberators really the BEST model or just one to which we've become accustomed?  If a trial is a process of truth-seeking through the careful analysis and interpretation of facts, isn't it better to acquire and consider as many facts as possible?

Aural Dyslexia

Yesterday, in an obvious attempt to curry favor, one of the Solipsist's minions brought him some blueberry muffins.

(Digression: What's so bad about bribery anyway?  You know, in some countries, bribery is such the everyday occurrence, that people are allowed to claim bribes as a legitimate expense on tax forms.  Seriously!  End of digression.)

Anyway, today, said minion asked said Solipsist, "How do you like the muffins?"

The Solipsist, in a bit of a rush and admittedly a bit punchy, heard "How do you like my face?"

Thinking this was an odd question and richly deserving of a snarky answer, YNSHC replied, "Your face?  It's no worse than usual, I suppose."

Clarifications followed, and a good laugh was had by all.  (And, yes, the next time the minion offers muffins, the Solipsist WILL be sure to run a tox screen on them before ingesting).

This got YNSHC thinking about the phenomenon of mishearing.  We all have our favorite examples.  From pop music, of course, you have "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy" and "There's a bathroom on the right."  Once, YNSHC was having dinner with some friends at a semi-trendy New York restaurant.  One friend, speaking about the restaurant and its famous clientele, pointed at a booth and said, "I once saw Dennis Miller over there."  What the rest of the table heard, though, was, "[mumble, mumble] Juan is smelly over there."  It was one of those great you-had-to-be-there moments, but the rest of the table convulsed with laughter for the next three courses.

What causes these moments of aural dyslexia?  Obviously, unfamiliar accents and failure to enunciate are culprits.  That explains WHY people don't always understand what is being said to them.  But what fascinates the Solipsist is the automatic impulse to translate.  That is, we don't hear NOTHING when we mishear; we hear SOMETHING, and our brains quickly convert what we've heard into something resembling a coherent (if odd) message.  Even though there was no "Juan," three people--without discussing it amongst themselves--translated a mumbled statement into a judgment on this non-person's hygiene.  Even though the minion had no reason to ask his boss about his face, the boss--rather than hearing "nothing" or just coming to the realization that he had not heard--"heard" the odd question.

Our brains' need for order is apparently so great that they will impose order on not just the disorderly, but on the thoroughly order-less.  It supports the idea that there is no objective reality, only a series of random events with order imposed by these wonderful little computers in our heads.

Maybe the Solipsist is just reading too much into things.  But that kind of proves the point, no?

Modern Plagues

"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Get up early in the morning, confront Pharaoh and say to him, "This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me, or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth.  For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth."'"

Exodus 9: 13-15

(Digression: Not for nothing, God, but what's with all the embedded quotes?  End of digression.)

The Eleventh Plague: Peanut Butter!

If God wanted to do some serious smiting, he could have given the Egyptians a pestilent two-fer by changing the waters of the Red Sea not to blood but to peanut butter.  Thus would he have not only produced unquenchable thirst, but also accomplished the killing of the first born.  At least it seems that way.  When did peanut butter become as big a threat to childhood survival as asthma and Michael Jackson?  If you're ever attacked by a slavering mob of toddlers, all you need to do is brandish a jar of JIF to escape unscathed (and probably take out a few of the tykes into the bargain).

Or so it was.  Scientists have developed a new kind of therapy, wherein children are slowly exposed to peanut butter.  They are first given near-microscopic amounts, and doctors slowly, carefully, increase the dosage as long as the child doesn't, like, die.  The ultimate goal is for the children to be able to eat fifteen (count 'em fifteen!) peanuts without suffering anaphylactic shock.

One can only imagine the disappointment of parents whose children can only swallow fourteen peanuts.  Talk about childhood trauma.

If you want to eat sixteen peanuts, you're on your own!

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The Twelfth Plague: Night of the Living Volunteers!

A bit of silver around the edges of today's economic clouds: Many people are offering their services to non-profit agencies as a way to deal with being laid off.  They see these as networking opportunities, and/or as ways to keep themselves productively occupied while they look for work and/or as responses to our somewhat messianic president's call to national service.

It does seem to be a bit of a mixed blessing, though.

From today's Times:

"'Can you make them stop calling?' groused one nonprofit executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.  'Everybody's inspired by Obama,' he said, adding: 'They also don't have jobs.'"

Gosh-darn those unemployed!  Why can't they be out using the services of non-profit agencies instead of helping non-profit agencies complete their menial tasks?

Beware, though: Throngs of would-be samaritans were seen shambling around midtown, their eyes glazed over, drooling, mumbling, "Choooorrrees!  Us want choooorrrrress!"

Torture--Financial and Otherwise

The Dow finished up 0.8% on Friday.  Not especially exciting news, but YNSHC wonders if his readers feel the same sort of thrill of relief (oxymoron?) when the stock market fluctuates by less than one percentage point on any given day.  Turbulence, good or bad, drains the soul.

The Solipsist has become far more. . . 'interested in' is the wrong term. . . perhaps 'forced to dwell upon' would be more appropriate--forced to dwell upon matters economic over the last several months than he ever would have thought possible.  The shameful truth is he really understands very little of what, exactly, has happened.  In that, of course, he is no different from the vast majority of captains of industry and titans of finance who got us into this mess.  Still, it pains him to fall back on what he believes to be cliched populist outrage (as opposed to well-informed analysis) when he reads about still more bonuses being paid out to AIG executives and can merely throw out predictable howls of protest.

Nevertheless: Howl.

AIG execs are in line to receive an additional $165 million in bonuses in the next few weeks, despite receiving some $170 BILLION in taxpayer bailout money.  Seems the company is "helpless" to do anything about having to pay out these bonuses, as the contracts were entered into last year long before the financial meltdown threatened the company with bankruptcy.

Now, the Solipsist is all for honoring contracts.  But shouldn't the government have forced AIG to renegotiate these contracts as a condition of receiving public money?  Of course, these are RETENTION bonuses (i.e., money paid to keep people from leaving); and the total comes to a mere 0.1% of the bailout funds (there's that reassuring less than one-percent amount again--ahhhh!); so it seems a small enough price to pay to retain the business acumen that made AIG what it is!

Oh.

Never mind.

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A couple of other points in response to today's Times:

Nicholas Kristof writes about contaminants in the nation's food supply, specifically the disturbing incidence of MRSA in pork.  MRSA stands for "methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus"--in other words, an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a potentially lethal "superbug."

In the column, Kristof provided his readers with the medical community's pronunciation of MRSA: "mersa."  This is not the first time YNSHC has seen the term in print, but, being the sunny optimist he is, he took comfort that the term has not yet entered so completely into the public realm that a columnist could take for granted that his readers would know it.  When Letterman starts making "mersa jokes,"  head for the hills.

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On a less whimsical note (less whimsical than drug-resistant killer bacteria?  Why yes!):

Next to Kristof's column was a long piece by Mark Danner, a journalism professor, featuring excerpts from a Red Cross report documenting the interrogation of various high-value terrorism suspects at CIA "black sites."  The point of the article is that the US engaged in torture, that everybody in power knew it, and that the information (if any) gleaned from these torture sessions will be inadmissible in court and, for that and other reasons, not least of which is the diminution of America's moral standing in the world, is appalling and counterproductive.

And yet.

The Solipsist can't help noticing that none of the detainees mentioned in this particular article are innocent.  The people under discussion are people like Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--dedicated and apparently unrepentant members of Al Qaeda.  In response to reading about their suffering--forgive me, dear readers--all YNSHC could think was, frankly:

Good.

Now, this is not to suggest that everyone who has been held under abhorrent conditions or subjected to waterboarding or marched in front of the cameras of Abu Ghraib is guilty or deserving of this treatment.  And as an American, the Solipsist finds something disturbing and depressing at the thought that this country has openly adapted interrogation techniques more commonly associated with despotic regimes.  But he cannot help but think that there are some relatives of people killed at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and other terrorist attacks around the world who would be more than a little satisfied by the treatment these people are receiving.  Yes, this might eliminate any chance for a "fair trial" in a US court of law, but would that provide the right sort of "justice" anyway?  A trial, a guilty verdict, and, presumably, a death sentence carried out after lengthy appeals via comparatively humane method  like lethal injection?  Satisfying?  Maybe, but probably not as satisfying to some as the thought of the ringleaders writhing in agony for a few dozen years.

To clarify: This writer is not advocating torture for torture's sake, or even as an all-purpose,  Jack-Bauer-esque interrogation method.  But perhaps as a judicially sanctioned form of punishment, it might not be such a bad idea.  For some crimes, it seems somehow more appropriate than life in prison or a swift and humane judicial execution.

Discuss.